Search results for: "Persistence"

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  2. The Skill of Renunciation
     … And two, persistence: You stick with it. The mind slips off, you bring it back. Slips off again, you bring it back again. You don’t get discouraged. But you’re trying to pay full attention. Which is the third quality. So notice, when the mind is about to slip off, what does it do? How does it talk to itself? How does it … 
  3. A Magic Set of Tools
     … The third quality we add is persistence or ardency. Keep with it. No matter how loud the bombs or incessant the crickets, you’re not going to send your attention after them. You know they’re there. You’re not going to deny that they’re there, but they’re simply not places you want to go. You’re going to keep tabs on … 
  4. Learning by Doing
     … your determination to stay here, your strong sense that this is a good thing to be doing right now—good for you, good for the people around you—and the persistence that sticks with it, no matter what. Many of the interesting things that are going to happen in the mind tend to happen when we switch our frame of reference. There’s a … 
  5. Analyzing Anger
     … You take delight in developing your conviction, your persistence, your mindfulness, your concentration, and your discernment. But then when they’ve done their work, you have to see that they, too, are not the goal. They’re the path. So the very final step is to use this five-factor analysis and apply that to the path, too. That’s when you’re really … 
  6. Mental Seclusion
     … It depends on your skill, and skill comes from persistence. You stick with it. If the mind wanders off, you bring it back. If it wanders off again, you bring it back again. Don’t get discouraged. You’re developing new habits in the mind—and you’re raising the level of the mind so that it’s not a slave to the world … 
  7. Living Honorably
     … As long as the mindfulness and concentration are not yet strong, you need other forms of strength, such as conviction and persistence. You’re convinced that this has got to be the way out, this has got to be the way to behave, and this is the noble way to look for happiness. You have to ask yourself: “Are you going to go like … 
  8. Time Well Spent
     … When you’re doing chores around the monastery, it’s an opportunity to train a lot of good qualities, such as persistence, endurance, and determination. You make up your mind you’re going to do a project and you see it through. There’s equanimity when things don’t go well—but it’s not the kind of equanimity that just gives up. It … 
  9. What Right Mindfulness Remembers
     … Then there’s the quality of persistence, which means that you keep at it, but it doesn’t mean you keep pushing yourself up against the wall. You find something good and you stick with it. This is where the quality of respect for concentration comes in, because it’s so easy to think “Well, I can do this anytime, I’ll just leave … 
  10. Energizing Your Meditation
     … The energizing factors are analysis of qualities, persistence, and rapture. Those are the factors you have to emphasize at the beginning of the meditation—especially when you’re tired—holding in mind the perception that, yes, you do have to put some energy in if you’re going to get some energy out. But you have to do it in the right way. Otherwise … 
  11. Of Past & Future
     … If the mind is persistent and constantly going back to the past or worrying about the future, keep reminding yourself of the lessons that the Dhamma has to teach about how to relate to the past and the future. The only really beneficial use for the past is to remember your mistakes and to resolve not to repeat them, to remember what you did … 
  12. An Exercise in Freedom
     … The mind is capable of developing mindfulness, alertness, conviction, persistence, concentration, discernment, goodwill—all kinds of good qualities. The more you exercise these qualities, the greater your range of freedom, the greater your range of choice. But the Buddha starts with basics. He starts with a basic problem that’s totally self-evident, that there is suffering and we don’t like it. There … 
  13. Intelligent Effort
    There are four kinds of right effort, four ways in which the strength of persistence gets developed: preventing unskillful qualities from arising, abandoning any unskillful qualities that have arisen, giving rise to skillful qualities that are not there yet, and then, once they’re there, trying to develop them further. Sometimes we get stuck on a snag. We’ve been doing one kind of … 
  14. The Complexity of Pain
     … Other times, it’s pretty resistant, pretty persistent, and you can’t bank on it ending. But you can bank on your ability to think in new ways in the present moment, so that even though the past karma may still be producing results, you’re not going to suffer from it. It’s good that in English we have these two words separately … 
  15. Sophisticated Dhamma
     … It requires a lot of effort, a lot of persistence, just to stick with one object. Sometimes it seems that focusing the breath is like trying to balance a ball bearing on the tip of a needle. It just keeps falling off, falling off, falling off. So you have to have a lot of respect for the potential of concentration to keep at it … 
  16. Getting the Most Out of the Present
     … determination, persistence, endurance, truthfulness, goodwill for the people who’d benefit from getting the duty done, equanimity toward the things that you’d rather be doing. You realize that you can’t have your druthers all the time. When you can think in this way, then everything in life becomes a part of the practice. None of your time is wasted. Our problem is … 
  17. Discernment: Commit & Reflect
     … When you have conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, all these things come together to make your discernment strong. Then the discernment turns around and solidifies those other qualities, because you begin to see things for yourself. You’re taking them not just on faith or because you believe in them. It’s because you’ve seen them. You move from right view to right knowledge … 
  18. Strong Against Anger & Fear
     … That’s the basis of all the strengths the Buddha recommended—conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, discernment: They’re all based on heedfulness. That’s a point that’s not stressed often enough. We hear so much about interconnectedness and the joy we should find in being interconnected—that somehow, if we appreciate our interconnectedness, we will be nicer to one another. Whereas the Buddha … 
  19. Sowing Good Seeds
     … You plant the seed of staying with the breath, of being mindful, being alert, being persistent, and it grows into a greater and greater sensitivity, greater and greater stability, a sense of well-being, clarity, maturity of mind, as you outgrow childish habits. So make sure you’re planting a good seed right here. Plant the best seed you can. Tend to it, and … 
  20. The Elephant Hunter
     … They required conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. So he developed those qualities. When he found that the results were not what he’d hoped for, he moved on. But he committed himself first, then he reflected. That’s what he asks you to do, too. Conviction is basically taking on, as a working hypothesis, the teachings that you are responsible for your actions … 
  21. Purity of Heart
     … We strengthen the mind in our conviction, persistence, mindfulness, concentration, and discernment. When these qualities are developed, the mind reaches the point where it doesn’t have to depend on any kind of food at all for its happiness. They say that arahants have understood food, and they’re totally independent of nutriment, and, as a result, you can’t trace their path, in … 
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